Guy de Maupassant
 Early life
o Born Henri René Albert Guy de
Maupassant on August 5, 1850 in Dieppe,
France
o Parents: Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave
de Maupassant, both from rich bourgeois
families
o His parents separated when he was 11
 He lived with his mother along
with his younger brother
o His mother, who’s very fond of classical
literature (Shakespeare), was the most
influential figure in his life
 Education
o At 13, he was sent to the seminary of
Yvetot for classical studies but was
expelled in 1866.
 He retained a marked hostility to
religion from his early education
o He was moved as a day boarder in
Institution Leroy-Petit, a private school,
along with his brother
o In 1867, as he entered junior high school,
he made acquaintance with Gustave
Flaubert (French writer –among the
greatest novelists in Western literature)
at the insistence of his mother
o In the following year, he was again sent to
another school, Lycée Pierre-Corneille,
where he proved to be a good scholar
indulging in poetry and theatricals
 During the War
o The Franco-Prussian War broke while he
was studying law and so he enlisted as a
volunteer in the army.
o He moved to Paris and spent ten years as
a clerk in the Navy Department
 Writing Career
o Gustave Flaubert took him under his
protection and guided de Maupassant to
his debut in journalism and literature
o In 1878, he was transferred to the
Ministry of Public Instruction and became
a contributing editor to several leading
newspapers
 He wrote novels and short stories
during his free time
o In 1880, his first considered masterpiece,
Boule de Suif, met tremendous success
o The decade from 1880-1891 was the
most successful of Maupassant’s life
o In 1881, he published his first volume of
short stories, La Maison Tellier, which
reached twelve editions within two years
o In 1883, his first novel, Une Vie, sold
25,000 copies in less than a year
o In 1885, his second novel , Bel Ami, had
thirty-seven printings in just four months
o Soon after being commissioned by his
editor to write more stories, he has
written Pierre et Jean, which is
considered by many as his greatest novel
 Later Years
o He loved retirement, solitude and
mediation while he cruised in different
parts of Europe on his private yacht, Bel-
Ami
o He made friends with different literary
celebrities of his day. After meeting
Hippolyte Taine (critic and historian), he
became a devoted philosopher-historian.
 o Maupassant was among the 19th- century  Pierre et Jean (1888)
Parisians who opposed the construction  Fort comme la mort (1889)
 Notre Cœur (1890)
of the Eiffel Tower.
o Some of his Short Story Collections
 He and forty-six other Parisian
 Les Soirées de Medan (1880)
literary and artistic notables
 Mademoiselle Fifi (1882)
attached their names to a letter
of protest against the tower’s
construction.
o In his last years, he developed constant
desire for solitude, an obsession for self-
preservation, and fear of death and
paranoia of persecution caused by the
syphilis he had contracted in his youth.
o On January 2, 1892, he tried committing
suicide by cutting his throat. He was
admitted to the private asylum of Esprit
Blanche in Paris, where he died on July 6,
1893 (aged 42)
o Guy de Maupassant wrote his own
epitaph, which says: “I have coveted
everything and taken pleasure in
nothing”.
 Style
o He’s considered as one of the fathers of
the modern short story
o Has written in high-Realist and fantastic
modes to recreate Third Republic France
in a realistic way
o He often implies symptoms of troubled
minds in his protagonists. He was
fascinated by the discipline of psychiatry
after attending public lectures on it.
 Some of His Works
o Novels
 Une Vie (1883)
 Bel-Ami (1885)
 Mont-Oriol (1887)